Author Archive: Brian Chee
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Nov 10th, 2009 | Brian CheeSo while this opinion may not be popular, Clouds sure feels like mainframe service bureaus all over again. Let’s look at the pieces and you decide.
I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve been sucked into where the office tree hugger started ranting at me about how much energy data centers use to run the servers and air-conditioning. Even people “in the know” look at data centers as a black hole for power and cooling, but I try to point out that data centers also serve a very important function rarely mentioned. The tendency for departments to keep their servers close by has the unintended consequence on building management’s ability to shutdown office buildings on weekends, evenings and holidays.
I’ve done a bit of mobile phone development in my time and let me tell you, the #1 frustration is dealing with the massive number of variations in mobile phone platforms. Developing for a mobile is similar to saying that you’re going to develop a handbag for the latest fashion craze that might last a whole 6 months. If there are mobile phone vendors out there wondering why the enterprise hasn’t adopted more mobile platforms and why the crackberry has done so amazingly well….well my spin is that developers aren’t willing to re-write their entire system every six months.
So in the beginning there were a small number of academic computing centers that found the need to share information on an ongoing basis. Those connections started to become very numerous indeed as multi university research projects became more and more common. As DARPA funded more and more research into communications, there grew a concept of abstracting the details out of the entire process. So instead of a wire going from your desktop to each and every computer in your organization, there existed a wish for a single connection that would provide a way to “switch” between all the different computers you needed to use.
It’s certain that you’ve heard about Cloud Computing in one form or another by now. I’m certainly a victim of the cloud frenzy in that Curtis Franklin and I are writing a book on it for CRC Press. What I would like to add to the buzzing is that Clouds should also feel familiar too. After all, what we’re seeing is a cycle turning back from distributed chaos computing and heading back towards centralization in one form or another.
In the beginning the glass houses had their high priests dressed alike in white lab coats all servicing the alter of the information deities. However, the masses found that those cute little personal computers could run this thing called a spreadsheet and allow them to do “what if scenarios” like there was no tomorrow. So in went the first nail in the proverbial mainframe coffin. Well everything in life seems to be cyclical…I mean the kids are wearing clothes that I remember from the 60′s and paisley is back for heaven’s sake!
So I’ve been playing in the Beta program for a while now and while my old T-Mobile Dash (1st generation) had problems, the new HTC Touch Pro 2 that I have is on the supported hardware list. Simply put, this service feels a bit confusing since many of the features are also listed as part of Windows Mobile 6.5 which also just got announced. Auto backup, Windows Live Sync (mesh storage), upload to social networks, and some premium features that can push a message to the phone….or if you are convinced it’s gone for good, send a wipe to it.
So Hawaii just went through a tense couple of hours as we waited on the data to come in off the mid pacific buoys in regards to a possible tsunami from the 8.3 earthquake in Samoa. What this really started me thinking about was business continuity and just how would my school, my lab or my home recover from a natural disaster? Well no tsunami, but lots of folks were thinking about “what if”.
How many times have you gone on a trip only to discover that you left some important file behind. Sometimes you’re lucky and you have something like a SharePoint server up at your company, but nowdays it’s just as likely that you work from home and that those missing files are on the USB drive on your home office desk. Or you meet up with an old buddy and you really want to show them the video of your kids at the beach. Regardless, many of us have gone the road of putting in a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device in our home so that we could have a common storage area for the family. If you’re particularly brave you’ve fought the battle of poking holes in your home firewall, paying the fees to get dynamic DNS, and pulled out wads of hair when things like uPnP only slightly work.
It’s an all too familiar scenario of your mobile phone slipping out of your pocket or purse as you scramble out of a cab. If you’re incredibly lucky you realize this quickly and start calling your phone in hopes that the next passenger is honest and will pickup and arrange to get the phone back to you. Yeah, and a Hawaii kid can become president….well anything can happen once in a while. So getting to the real point, we all cringed at this scenario because most of us live and die by our smart phones. Heck even celebs like Naomi Campbell got her purse snatched and had to explain to her buds (like Mick Jagger) that someone now had their private phone numbers.
I just got a press release from the folks at Network Instruments celebrating their 15th anniversary. This Minnesota garage startup founded by CEO Roman Oliynyk and President Douglas Smith has had a long time relationship with the InteropNET Team especially as the world of networking learned how to talk to each other.
